for my internal LAN network I am looking at the D-LINK DGS-1248T 48 port GbE switch  $800 (CAD)

and for my IP phones the D-LINK DES-1228P  10/100 POE switch  $449 (CAD)

I don't have them yet, anyone tried them?

@youngadmin:

I've done a bit more planning, and now realize that I may want to use pfsense to route and filter between 4 subnets….@ gigabit speed...or faster (using LACP)....while running Snort....and terminating an IPsec tunnel...and doing traffic shaping (esp for SIP)...while load balancing 2 or 3 WANs...and CARP. What will it take?

This is more than I'd suggest running on any single box.

I'd split it out into two machines (or two CARP clusters). One for routing and filtering between internal subnets for gigabit. You'll have to run Snort on a different machine most likely, you're not going to be able to route gigabit speeds and have Snort analyze at the same speeds on any hardware. Routing 4+ Gbps is going to require a new server class machine.

Second, I'd put up another machine or CARP cluster at your perimeter, which could do Snort, load balancing, etc. Not sure how the shaper would work in a multi WAN environment, but I'm guessing not real well.

I want to use a neoware capio thin client for this job. And -you got it- this thing has no expansion slots. I would at least like to give it a try and if it fails, I'll resell it on ebay and get a more suitable machine. but thanks for your response anyways.

try to boot from a floppy using Smart Boot Manager: http://sourceforge.net/projects/btmgr/

If you get to the BTMGR menu select to boot from the pfSense CDROM.

Cheers
Daniel S. Haischt

Go with Intel if you plan on staying with FreeBSD/pfSense.  Intel supports their cards in FreeBSD more than any other vendor with almost weekly changes to -CURRENT (FreeBSD 7-CURRENT) which we will be switching to in due time.

Just tried a sata hard drive and its all good. Bugger bought a new ide laptop drive for nothing.

Hi, the BETA version of pfsense have recognized the nic without issues, so everything is up and running  8)

That's the point - it locks the console. :) It completely disables it, it's working as it should.

There's no way to make it prompt for a login at this time. It's either enabled or disabled.

I got CARP running over firewire using fwip, not fwe (which seems to be non-standard).
I have some notes here:
http://forum.pfsense.org/index.php/topic,3604.0.html

Thanks guys for the suggestions. Will see if I can get the developers load or a standard BSD loaded.

Chris, what's the best way to get ahold of that 1.3 beta image with debugger tools? I'll pm you with my email addy.

thanks,
dean

Hmm not sure, it doesn't seem to be a trunk connection you have going too the pfSense box, but i could be wrong.

Some unofficial firmware is available from some cool people at http://www.routertech.org

I got their firmware to flash onto the D-Link box to turn it into a working Linux router.  But it doesn't seem to keep the DSL line up for more than a minute or two at a time.  I guess you get what you pay for with routers!

So - the DSL-320T is not a recommended product for connecting pfSense to ADSL.

if will be ported from linux to bsd it will then

i am using the 1.2 beta image that released May 17, 2007

@cmb:

Not sure why it's only detecting one CPU.

Well fortunately after a firmware update of that Compaq both CPUs are detected (before they weren't even detected on Linux).
@cmb:

With a single 933 MHz CPU, ~210 Mb is obviously the best you can do on that hardware. Maxed out on interrupt load means your CPU is a bottleneck.
If you can get it to detect the second CPU, you should be able to push that over 300 Mb, but don't expect miracles out of CPU's that slow. If you need to firewall gigabit at wire speed, you're going to need a faster processor, even a dual 933 isn't going to cut it.

I can't believe that it won't get any faster than that with such hardware. After the second CPU got detected, we now reach 270 Mbits and interrupt CPU load is around 40-45%. (Each CPU around 40-45%) So what could it be that now slows the network?
@cmb:

On the CPU detection, first see if you can get a BIOS update and updates for any other firmware on the box. I would suggest searching for people's experiences with that hardware and FreeBSD 6.2, might find something useful that way. Also search here on the forum and on the mailing list archives.

Unfortunately there wasn't too many information on the net about compaq ml530 with freebsd 6+ .. but anyway at least the CPU problem is now solved.. Thanks for the hint, maybe you've got another one for the still somewhat "slow" network ..

Bandwidth?

The hardware you need for a 56 Kb/s dialup link will be rather different from that required for a 20 MB/s broadband link ;)

Packages?

Are you planning on using it for anything more than a firewall/router?

Thanks for the insight.  Any other comments about the 64 bit and the dual core stuff etc?

In case anyone cares, I did setup a Linux box (2.6 kernel) to handle the speed limiting per IP address.  It doesn't seem to have as much demand on CPU and RAM etc.  This combonation works quite well.

Thanks pfSense.  I'll keep testing to see if this will handle my needs.  If so, expect a donation.

States require roughtly 2KB a piece.  Do not over commit the state table.

Also look at modulate-state which will help in these situations.

Thanks everyone after giving them some ebay prices and telling them that it would be better to keep the cisco they decided to stay with it and use pfsense and a firewall behind.